The article is devoted to the systematize the characteristics of objects of the common heritage of mankind, to study the historical origins and connections of the concept of the common heritage of mankind with other legal categories and worldview systems, to determine the prospects of application of the concept in its legal and worldview aspects. The work is based on a set of approaches united in sociological legal consciousness, primarily historical, communicative and psychological ones, and on the methodological basis of I. Kant’s philosophy. The concept of the common heritage of mankind in the context of trans-historical development of social consciousness as an important system-making factor of societies of macro-level scales for the first time is investigated in the research. Mankind should return to its social consciousness an intersubjective relation to its planetary natural environment, that is, its inclusion in its multilevel diversity and recognition of its “subjectivity”, if not in a legal sense, then in the awareness of its complexity, self-regulatory properties, the need for its constant cognition in feedback mode – this idea should be the main new concept of protection of the common heritage of mankind.